


A Good Morning

by anacrusisnt



Series: She's the Prettiest Girl at the Party, and She Can Prove It with a Solid Right Hook [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Mornings, The fluff gets steamy but not explicit, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 12:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14736639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anacrusisnt/pseuds/anacrusisnt
Summary: Cullen and Ylassa wake up together. Mostly fluff, some steamy action but not explicit.





	A Good Morning

**Author's Note:**

> So if you've read / are a fan of the major work this ship is based on, you'll know that it's a pretty slow burn that we're nowhere CLOSE to resolving. But you've all been patient with me, (it's been a crazy year--I moved TO New York, finished graduate school, LEFT New York, and I'm currently trying to figure the next stage of my life out), so I figured I'd go ahead and start throwing together some established-relationship one-offs. 
> 
> If you haven't read the main work this is based on, I don't think you'd need to. But please check it out anyway if you like this--it's called "Tied", its the first entry of this series.

Cullen expected Ylassa to be in sleep the way she was when awake—larger than life. He expected her to sprawl herself out, to have to fight her for every inch of mattress the way they fought in every other aspect of their lives in the daylight. He expected to have to constantly wrestle the blankets and pillows from her. He expected her to snore in an adorable way that would _barely_ cross the line into obnoxiousness.

But instead she slept small, often curled into a ball or loosened fetal position, her arms pinned to her chest or bracing her head like she was shielding herself from some invisible attacker. Sometimes she would sleep on her stomach with her face smushed into the pillow at an angle, mouth slightly parted from sleep. She’d breathe so shallowly in that position that the first time they spent the night together, Cullen had to focus intently to see her lower back rise and fall with her breaths.

The way Ylassa slept struck him as odd at first, but it took Cullen a few nights for him to be able to put into words _why_ it was odd—she slept like a small child, lost and _vulnerable,_ two things which she almost certainly was but would never dare to let show while she was awake.

It was wonderfully endearing to bear witness to—and he didn’t mean to watch her sleep as much as he did, _really,_ but he had such a tenuous relationship with sleep that his choices were to be alone with his thoughts or to familiarize himself with the crooks and divots of her spine. Or that fascinating white-pink fernlike scar that ran down her right arm. Or even the Anchor, sometimes, when he could stand to touch it for more than a few seconds.

He would always choose to watch over her than be alone with his thoughts.

She slept like the dead, too. The first few nights he was terrified to shift his weight or roll over out of fear of rousing her. One night she fell asleep with her head on his chest and he didn’t dare breathe. By the fourth or fifth night, however, he realized that he could probably shake her as hard as he could, and it would still take a few seconds for her to join the world of the waking. Not like him—he slept so lightly that he would be stirred from fitful sleep if she climbed in and out of bed or so much as rolled over.

Not that she climbed in or out of bed or rolled over very much. Once Ylassa was out, she was pretty much out cold. Which suited Cullen just fine, because he was free to run his fingers through her hair, or hook his arm around her waist to pull her in close, or press his lips to the top of her head without worrying too much about disturbing her. Sometime's she'd stir, but never fully waken, and she'd often give a content sigh along with it. She'd settle back down to playing dead and he'd resume alternating between staring at her and staring at the ceiling, praying for sleep to take him.

Cullen was more than happy to play sentry so long as she was close. Not that he needed to. Skyhold was more than secure, and Ylassa had not yet reached a point where she was often plagued with nightmares like he was—and thank the Maker for _that,_ at least. He protected simply because that was what he did for the people he loved.

And yes, he loved her. Who in the Void was he kidding?

He craned his head up to look at the sky through the hole in his roof, currently losing its pink hue of daybreak and becoming increasingly blue, spattered with multi-hued clouds. He always hated it when morning came, and he’d have to shake Ylassa awake, because Maker knows she’d sleep until noon if someone didn’t do it.

He rolled onto his side and propped himself up on one elbow. “ _Lassa…”_ he whispered. “ _Lassa…”_ Cullen huffed and jostled her shoulder a bit. “Lassa,” he said at full volume now. He quickly patted her cheek a few times. “Lassa. Come on, darling, I need you upright. We have a War Meeting in an hour.”

Her eyelids finally fluttered for a moment before squeezing shut. “ _Five more minutes…”_ she muttered.

“No,” he answered with a gentle smile she couldn’t see.

“ _Pleeeeease?”_ she whined, although her voice was so coated with sleep it was more of a purr.

“ _No,_ ” he answered a bit more firmly.

“ _Why nooooooot?”_

“Because I know your tricks. You cutely ask for five minutes. Then you cutely ask for five more. Next thing I know it’s been an hour and we’re both late. There is no ‘five minutes’ with you. If I give you an inch, you’ll take a mile.”

Ylassa popped one eye open and shot him a devilish smirk, “Is it too much to hope that making me ‘take a mile’ was a double entendre for morning sex?”

He fought a grin. “It wasn’t. I already said that I know all your tricks. You know the old saying—‘Fool me the first ten times, shame on you. Fool me eleven times, shame on me’.”

Her open eye glared at him before she rolled over and pulled the blanket over her head.

He huffed good-naturedly. This was a morning ritual at this point. He yanked the blanket off, watching her curl into a ball to shield herself from the cold morning air, no longer able to use the blanket to do so. She scooted herself towards the middle of the bed, hoping to now combat the cold of the morning with Cullen’s own body heat.

Cullen pulled himself upright and sat at the foot of the bed, taking his own pillow with him and hugging it. “Nice try,” he said in a halfway sing-song voice.

“You’re evil,” she declared.

“Nonsense. You know it breaks my heart to rouse you from sleep.”

Ylassa chucked her pillow at him but, her back still to him, she missed him by a mile. It skirted over the footboard and flew somewhere across the room.

“You just threw your only pillow,” he teased. “That wasn’t very smart.”

She rolled over to grab his pillow, only to see that he had the foresight to grab it when he went to sit at the foot of the bed. “Creators, you really _do_ know my tricks,” she muttered.

He smiled at her, “Are you awake now?”

She made a face as if she was considering it for a moment. “Yes,” she said with an overdramatic sigh as she sat up. “But I’m not happy about it.” She ran her fingers through her hair a few times to try to de-muss it.

“I’m not saying you have to be. But now that you’re upright…” He crawled on his hands and knees back toward the head of the bed and kissed her. Ylassa hummed and her hands instantly shot up to cradle his face. “ _Good morning, darling,_ ” he whispered when the kiss finally broke.

She shot him a dazed grin. “A very good morning,” she agreed.

She kissed him again, gently worrying his lower lip with her teeth. His mouth answered back with a vengeance, snaking his tongue into hers. His mouth, teeth, and tongue began to work its way down to the corner of her mouth, her jaw, her throat, her collarbone… She sighed and hummed the whole way, her fingers digging into his hair and egging him on with a slight push onto the top of his head downward.

He had reached the collar of her shirt now, and his hands crept towards the hem of the shirt to pull it off her.

She caught his hands at the wrists and laughed. “I’m sorry,” she began with mock offense, “but what happened to ‘ _fool me eleven times’_?”

He shrugged casually, “Then _'shame on me'_ , I guess.”

Her haughty smirk at turned into a full-blown grin as she grabbed the hem of her nightshirt and began to pull it over her head. “I know we have that War Meeting," she whispered. "We can be quick.” Freed from her nightshirt, she chucked it somewhere over Cullen’s head.

He regarded her for a moment—from her slender ribcage to her muscled arms, her olive skin littered with scars, all the way to her bright brown eyes and wicked smile. He sighed, as breathless as he was the first time. “If I’m going to be quick, it won’t be because of the damn War Meeting—sweet blessed Andraste you are _lovely_.”

Ylassa giggled and enveloped him in her arms, warm and light, and his lips seized hers once more before they resumed their path downward.

It was about to be a _very_ good morning.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one night after taking migraine meds, along with part of a similar one from Ylassa's POV. It's short and sweet-- I just love these dumbasses and wanted to feed the streets with some steamy fluff where they're already together.


End file.
